


Barricades of a Different Kind

by convolutedConcussion



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, I'm Sorry Victor Hugo, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:53:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convolutedConcussion/pseuds/convolutedConcussion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hey, look, man, I don't think they wanna be here any more than people tend to want them here but they're here, okay?" he answers, impassioned and emphatic and furious enough to be as a different person in the eyes of the friends that know him so well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barricades of a Different Kind

**Author's Note:**

> This work begins with the line, "It all started with a ship," and I'm sorry to admit that that's true in more ways than one.

It all started with a ship, which is the only acceptable and believable way for these things to start. And at first it was just one ship—a crash-landing just outside of the city. It was insanity. For many, for most, hell, for even almost everyone, the first thought was immediately that it was some kind of attack—some failure of technology that threw it off course but an aim made by someone with nefarious intent. There was fear and secrecy; the government wouldn't say anything and people on TV and radio and internet and any other form of communication that panic and information could reach fed on the chaos. And then there was another, in the English countryside. Two in Siberia. One smack in the middle of Tel Aviv. The fear was now universal, the flavor stagnant on the tongues of humans across the globe.

And then they were discovered.

Found among the wreckage, unexplainable creatures. Humans made first contact—first real, palpable contact with another kind—but humans are fearful and doubtful and dangerous. Troops marched in and cordoned off the areas. They boxed them in, cut them off from the human world, left them to fend for themselves. And thus they disappeared from the human mentality almost completely. They became... novelties, the sites of the crashes became tourist attractions. The creatures that lived there were inconsequential and ill-treated at best. They were becoming an afterthought behind their electrified fences and stone walls.

–

At this point, one begs a little description of the aliens and before the story continues the writer feels it would be wise to give one. The creatures are mostly bipedal, and they stand taller than most humans. They have, though, four arms and a propensity to slouch forward and support themselves on the thick, curved fingers of their longer, lower arms. These arms are positioned halfway down what could ostensibly be called their torsos, and the hands connected to them are crude, large and flat appendages used for grunt work. Higher up on their slim bodies, below the start of the neck, are the dominant arms with hands more serviceable to sentient beings capable technological advancements that would eventually lead them to interplanetary and, arguably, intergalactic travel. The fingers on these hands are infinitely more flexible and variable than those on human hands. They rest on joints much freer to circular motion. Classified documentation will tell that they have both an internal skeleton and, on many places, are plated with a thick organic armor—an exoskeleton. Their necks are long, their skulls shaped so much like those of “little green men” that there were long groups who believed their appearance a hoax. They have wide mouths and flat, black tongues. Instead of teeth in the typical sense, they have on the top and lower part of their mouths each a single beak-like bone that they seem to find useful enough. They have multiple sets of eyes, no discernible noses or ears (though they seem to hear and smell well enough and maybe better than humans), and a tendency to look—or to appear to be looking—in many directions at once.

They are not capable of speech.

And they are passive. Fearsome, yes, in appearance and when threatened. Of course, most creatures are as well. Yet few people to a point had ever studied them alive.

 

Until, that is, a young man sneaked through the barricade with the intention of hiding from the cops.

 


End file.
